Man Will Destroy Himself
by ambre gris
Summary: Sometimes there is a price to be paid for doing what you feel is right. Joel refuses to see the bigger picture. One-shot. Endgame spoilers.


**Author's Note**: I didn't play the game but watched every second my boyfriend did (as I always do because I often care more about the storyline than he does and I'm pretty bad at these sorts of games anyway). It was such a refreshing story that tore me apart at every twist and turn. Naughty Dog really hit the mark with this one, not just with the gameplay but with the writing and characters and the creation of their world. Here be some spoilers if you haven't finished the game yet. Enjoy!

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**Man Will Destroy Himself**

_She won't survive._

After a year of making the best of it, of fighting to see the next day, of doing anything in the very name of survival — it comes down to this. He's known for some time what bringing her in would mean but it was only when he started seeing her as a person and not a parcel that he truly realized her fate. He feels naive, even with twenty years of a rough life tacked on the end. Of course she won't be going back with him. You can't give yourself to the betterment of humanity and then simply walk away when it's done.

She's not his daughter and he's not her dad but he feels now that he could have raised her from the day she was born. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. No, but he sees so much of what Sarah could have been that whatever is left of his heart opens up little by little and lets Ellie in before he can stop it. The girl is an infection herself, though one he is glad to have contracted. She laughs and smiles and wonders at this world of horror and uncertainty and Joel doesn't know how he can let that go so easily. Sarah is a memory that he'll never forget, cast in a photograph that he'll keep always, something he can look at from time to time and recall her eyes and her hair and her angelic voice. But he doesn't have a picture of Ellie. He'll forget about her soon enough and that possibility frightens him into sleepless nights and terrible daydreams that haunt his waking steps.

He sees the militia men and the doctors no differently. To him they're all infected, bearing down upon his charge and threatening to take her life without thought or remorse for who she is. For a while he thinks he's gone mad, that he's in the earliest stages of _cordyceps_' grasp, but as he destroys Marlene with one last shot to the head, his vision clears enough to finally steal Ellie away and drive into the wild unknown. Constantly Joel glances through the rear-view mirror not only to look for followers but to watch for her awakening. He knows she'll be confused. Maybe even disappointed. He's let her down but the fact that she's still with him is all he can think about on the silent journey into nowhere.

When she's finally coherent enough to ask what's happened, he considers the truth. It's on the tip of his tongue because after all this time he's found it difficult to lie to her, but when Joel finally speaks, the words that escape him resemble nothing he actually wants to say. Not even close. She seems to believe him and he desperately wishes he could make it real. It's so cruel that she really is the only one.

_But it's her choice_.

So young and she's known loss just as well, and now it shows more than ever. He feels a tiny flowering of regret in his gut, watching this immortal girl live on while everyone and everything she's ever loved withers at her feet. Eyes as green as nature's reclamation that surrounds them but a heart as dark as the twenty year-long night that is now destined to continue on. He's taken the greater purpose she felt and buried it and regret blooms into guilt that grows steadily within. But there's still time to tell her, to let her know. She's been waiting so long for her turn.

Instead, he swears that his words are true and that she has nothing to worry about when it comes to her and the Fireflies. That the world will get better at the hands of others and it's okay if she walks away. It's false reassurance, like the kind he gave to his daughter before she took her last breath. If there was a God, Joel would swear by Him. If Sarah had a grave he might even swear on it as well. But selfishness is a disease that masquerades as preservation. No one is immune and he's in the fevered throes of it, leading her back to Tommy's place to try and regain some semblance of a normal life, leaving the recent hardships behind. Ellie follows quietly, flourishing with her burden and a sense of disconnect that she may never be able to shake.

_I can't survive without you by my side._


End file.
